DTP Toolbox

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ DTP Toolbox / DTPToolbox.iso / textfiles / amigatutorial / part6 < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-06-14 | 34.4 KB | 757 lines

Memory recovery: The absolute most memory you can get is to rename or delete the st-seq and re-boot. At that point you're seeing what the computer sees as it tries to find "startup-sequence" in the s dir. If you want to run your st-seq step-by-step, this is the way to do it. Just type in each line of the st-seq one by one. If there's a snag you haven't been able to unravel, you'll find it now. To find out how much memory you're using, and have free, type Info. You can go through your st-seq step-by-step and Info after every entry and actually chart how much memory each command is using, if any. It's also fun to Runback PM (off Extras) and Sysmon (off FaccII) at the start of the st-seq just to watch the programs gobble up the Ram. You don't need to rename or delete the st-seq to be here in this bare- bones environment; you can make this one of your Select files, this one running "NewCLI" and that's all. You'll be in a "proper" DOS window with a LITTLE more memory being used than the first way. Your file "mm" (for MaxMem) would read something like this: Echo "Please remove disk from df1" ;gives you back a few more bytes Echo "Close all windows" ;lotsa graphic bytes in windows Echo "Path reset?" ;last-ditch effort Assign c: df0:c :re-assign dirs if applicable Assign l: df0:l Assign libs: df0:libs Delete Ram:#? all quiet ;cleans out Ram Fac -q ;turns off FaccII Blitzfonts -r ;turns off Blitzfonts InstallBeep -quit ;turns off PlayBeep Mackie -q ;turns off Mackie Lace ;non-Interlace uses fewer bytes Wait 3 ;to let Lace do its thing and let everybody else catch their collective breath Sweep, NewSweep or Flush2 ;cleans unused libs, etc, out of memory A couple of mentions: We have (in theory, anyway) that "m" file for the deleting Ram and quitting FaccII, so we could "f s/m" in place of those five lines, but it's better just to write it out..not only for the computer's sake but for glancing back over it in the future. It also saves a bit of time as it doesn't have to read the "f" (Execute) command or the scriptfile. We don't want to reset the paths unless we really have to. I probably shouldn't have even told you about it but you would have dug it up some- where and ended up going through a whole string of silly problems. It's an absolutely last-gasp try, right after taking the disk out of df1 and having to listen to that terrible clicking. Speaking of removing df1's disk, a program might actually need the extra bytes you get back, but once the program's loaded you can re-insert the disk. DPaint in 16-color hi-res is a good example. The drive just sitting there diskless also uses up memory, which is one of the reasons you never quite get near that magic 1,000,000 mark. One game, Destroyer, actually needs you to disconnect the drive to play it on a 512 machine. This is not only rude, but unethical, in the sense that one of the Big No-No's is not to plug and unplug the big cables any more than you have to, just because you'll start wearing out the pin sockets. The most need you'll have for big memory is painting the hi-res pic. You have to remember that when it comes to graphics you don't get that whole meg of Ram, and what you do have gets used up quickly. You definitely want every window closed. And you have more memory available if you run DPaint straight from a tool icon rather than from a scriptfile. If you normally like running DPaint from a file, you can always have two icons, the tool one named something like "MaxPaint.info" and the project/Xicon one named "DPaint.info". You'd rename Dpaint to "MaxPaint" so the tool icon would run it, then use the name "MaxPaint" in the Xicon file for the Project one. Then you use the MaxPaint for hi-res painting and DPaint for the rest. You can move an icon out of a window to the WorkBench screen and close the window behind it for a few more bytes. If it's a scriptfile (Project) you can activate the icon first and then close the window, but don't do it if it's a Tool icon..tools don't like it. Libs that are called up also account for some memory loss, often permanently. Jot down your memory available, pop up the Calculator and close it again, should be about the same. Open the Calc, hit one of its function keys and pow, it reads some math stuff from the mathieeedoubbas- .library and stores it into memory for immediate access. Close the Calc and you've lost about two thousand bytes. This is what Sweep is for. You want to see a real demo of Sweep, Say something (calls up translator.lib and narrator.dev) and see what you lose, then recover with Sweep. Some memory, alas, is gone forever once used, like the first time you open a window after booting up. Close the window and notice you don't get it all back, like you will when you open and close future windows. That's the Icon.library being permanently stored into memory (or was it the Info.library?). Other things get stored too, like the stuff in the l directory when they're used, and things like the printer.device once you use the printer. I point this out for a few different reasons. You might have some large graphics hack that was running fine before and now won't, possibly because you tapped into a few libs doing something else and permanently lost some memory. And sometimes a program will mess up the lib or device access for another program. Programs with audio in them seem particularly sensitive to this. While we're on the subject, it should be mentioned that part of a program's merit is whether or not it returns ALL our memory to us when done. Well, that's it for memory recovery. There are other odd tips and tricks, no doubt, like a program uses a little less memory if you type just the name rather than Run it, but hunting down that elusive byte is just part of the fun. You might make some very unique discovery just farting around that'll make BBS history. Tune in next week for...The Search For UnLoadWb! By the way, you think YOU got memory problems..pity us poor hard drive owners. Not only do BindDrivers and Mount suck up their fair share, but the ton of Assigns and Paths don't help either. And then on top of that we're trying to run these huge games out of them that were designed to be run straight off the disk without ANY LoadWb business or non-turnoffable sub- routines or anything, so let's have a little sympathy where it counts... Thankyew..thankyew..thankyew... * I haven't mentioned printers, by the way, because there's really not a heck of a lot to say about them. If you're into graphics printing then you'll be getting a graphics printer, best you can afford. I found the printed version of a good pic disappointing so I said to heck with it 'til I get a color laser-jet printer. I like the 25% cotton bond paper although it's a little expensive unless you buy it in the 500 box. The Memorex #3202-0130 is the cream of the crop, great stuff if you like good paper. If you want to copy every file name on the Workbench to the printer, type "Dir > par: opt a". If you want all of df1's filenames copied to the printer type "dir > par: df1: opt a". Sometime "par:", which directs the output straight to the parallel port, seems to work better, sometime "prt:" does, which uses the Prefs settings. Try both just to see. * Well, how 'bout an example of a "sub-scriptfile", or whatever you want to call it? I'm sure the books have a name for it but nothing springs to mind. I call it a "sidebar file" which, at least jounalistically, makes sense. I've got a downloaded game called Blackjack. It takes about a half a minute to get all loaded and set up (AmigaBasic), then when it does, the colors are...just hideous! By good fortune the program allows SetPrefs to do it's thing, so I do this in the Blackjack scriptfile: CD dh0:Games/Misc ;CD to dir game is in RunBack -1 dh0:c/f Blackfile ;Execute sidebar scriptfile dh0:Tools/Basic Blackjack ;run program, no Run SetPrefs Inlace ;back to Interlace colors/pointer when program is through To note is using the RunBack for the execution of the sidebar. If we'd just Executed it, it would have frozen the scriptfile until the sidebar file was finished, not the idea. The sidebar file "blackfile" is two lines: Wait 38 ;waits until program is loaded SetPrefs Black.jack ;sets colors and pointer to special Blackjack scheme The file "cdram" we inserted in the bottom of the st-seq is another sub- scriptfile, and you'll find various needs for them here and there. * As a small side note, it might be mentioned that you'll hear AmigaBasic being put down in all quarters, but if Blackjack had been written in c language or something it probably wouldn't have allowed us to alter the color scheme to our liking. Just thought it ought to be mentioned. * I told you before that if you were very very good I'd tell you where the Secret Passageway is in Dark Castle...and this will be the FIRST time The BenchMaster has let one of the Great Secrets be told...but told it shall be, as reward for your accomplishing this whole tutorial. Ready? Boot up the game, Beginner level. Enter door #3. Scoot up the ropes to that top-left platform. See the EDGE of the ledge up to your right? Ah ha! Jump up to it and you end up on the rope, probably being bitten by a rat. The trick is to get as close, and I mean AS CLOSE, to the wall as possible, turn around and THEN jump up to the ledge. Wow! You might, of course, want a little Shield or Fireball here as I believe we're expecting a visit from an old friend... The reason we're in Beginner mode is because, as you MAY know, when you get to the higher levels you bonk your head when you walk into a wall. You can do it in all three levels, it's just much easier at Beginner. It's a very light finger action, obviously, that's needed, but you'll get it. I've found that if I jump up on the rope, climb to the top then jump back off, the spot that it leaves me in gives me the best chance to scoot right up to the wall and stop. There are two okay spots; with his face dead flush against the wall and one pixel over to the right. A game glitch? Hey, who knows, right? I've found lots of "strange" things in the better games and don't have any idea if they're glitches or not. Go back and forth between Shield 3 and 4 and it keeps giving you points/lives. BUT only if you kill all the bats in #4 first! (you only have to do it once). It doesn't do that between any other screens, far as I know. Getting back to the Secret Passageway, the question is this: Why WOULDN'T an old castle have a Secret Passageway? And...would it have more than ONE?? In Barbarian, it's the same kind of thing. That first screen with the toothy rock? Run to the left and you can Jump up onto the wall, bypassing the scimitar guy; only wall you can do that with. And the wall IS a little bit lower than the others, so who says it's a game glitch? Isn't the winning picture at the end just fabulous? Who knows how many pictures we've got lying around and one of the best is on a disk we have to go through THAT to see! But it's WORTH it, that's the trouble! What's that? You haven't seen it yet? Oh...sorry! * Odds 'n Ends: - The reason I like ProWrite is because you can actually take IFF pics and load them onto a page. A feature that few, if any, of the competition can offer. It also just works damn well, except for it not saving in text correctly. I have to admit I've never called their technical support group; you never can tell, there might be an answer. Their Interlace version is great, with the Shift-Help key combination to "quiet" the screen down. - I put the big knock on PD modem programs earlier, but I did look at the latest version of AMIC (58e) the other night and it seemed real enough, al- though unnecessarily confusing, meaning it had gadgets all over the place, 95 per cent of which you never use. I've seen most of them and I still like Online! the best. Apart from working well, it's tasteful and discrete. - If a disk doesn't copy with MarauderII in the standard mode make sure to try some of the other options. FaeryTale and Firepower both need Verbatim mode, and Barbarian needs Verbatim and Index. It removes the purchase guarantees from Silent Service and Deluxe PaintII, bless its little heart. - There are also some good diskcopy programs running around the BBS's. X-Copy and Nibble have nabbed a few that Marauder couldn't get. - There are a couple of new file and/or disk compressors running around called Warp and Zip, which you'll want to pick up on your rounds. - If you liked Noah's.arc and think it could benefit others, please feel free to upload it far and wide. If I missed something vital, made a terrible error, please feel obligated to change or add to the text. This is an evolution, not a process. - When you Delete a file it doesn't really delete the material, it just erases it's "file allocation markers". That's why DiskDoctor or a BBS prog called UnDelete work; try it and see. You can actually erase everything on a disk, make a regular copy of it with MarauderII and STILL DiskDoctor the files off the copied disk! They're only gone for good if you write over them or format the disk. That's why a formatted disk writes so smooth and a completely deleted disk scratches all over the place. - DPaintIII is now out, complete with animation capabilities..nice! - Did you check out the difference between the CLI and the NewCLI commands? NewCLI runs and returns the cursor to you. OR, ahem, allows the scriptfile to continue. CLI acts more in the traditional manner of tools, freezing the scriptfile until it's closed. You'll use both in your script- files for various purposes. - I wantonly fize-zap anything I see fit, and I encourage you to do the same. Just be forewarned that if you file-zap a program and suddenly it won't run correctly, well, that's why. Some programs just can't handle the smallest change. Silent Service and Chessmaster are two that mess right up. I guess Best Advice would be to always file-zap a copy first. - It may not help much, but if you type a question mark after a command, like "Assign ?", it spits the template back at you. A lot of programs, possibly the majority, give you the proper format if you type just the program's name without any particulars, or maybe a "-?" or "-help". - It's not uncommon to download a file and discover there's something wrong with it when you go to de-arc it. The download proceedure seems to be very sensitive to interference, etc, and there's not much we can do about it except to set a good example by attaching a Zzenpad.foo file to files we arc for uploading. I downloaded maybe ten files one day and HALF of them didn't de-arc correctly. That doesn't necessarily mean the program won't run; it depends on what got cut off. I'm presently using Xmodem-CRC and it seems to be the best of the bunch. - What to try if you're getting a lot of corrupt downloads: My own experience says phone line interference is the major culprit, and this can be an old phone cord that suddenly gets moved a little bit, something elec- trical getting turned on or off, maybe a slight power surge, and even good ol' out-of-your-control interference, what we used to call "static". Try replacing the phone cord, and if you're really serious wire up the modem directly to the junction box with twisted, solid-core wire. There might also be the occasional thing you do with the computer while downloading that your terminal program finds slightly disagreeable. I have to admit, though, I've put this thing through some real loops while downloading (usually because I forgot I was online at the time, heh heh..) and don't remember a program not de-arc'ing properly because of it. Well, I GURU'D a few times, but that's different. - I downloaded a couple of fonts to use with NewFont, agreeing that a computer font shouldn't have all those little serifs that the Topaz font does; those unnecessary "cute" parts of the letters. The trouble is that the Alternate keys weren't the same and everybody, especially the printer, got very unhappy. What I did was just haul out Fed off the Basic/Extras disk and slice up the default font. A good computer lesson: First I try the topaz 11, the only topaz in my fonts/topaz directory, but it's too big for the DU boxes (everything uses the new font, not just the CLI), so I'm going through the disks trying to dig up a smaller topaz, having the feeling that somewhere I'd seen one, but to no avail. But surprise of surprises, if you make Fed the FIRST thing you use after booting up, it has both topaz 8 and topaz 9 listed! Use the computer a bit, pop open Fed and the topaz 8 & 9 are gone! Yes, just another one of Amazing Computer Things that keeps it all so facinating. So I first used the 9, then the 8 and the 8 works perfectly. I'm including it with the tutorial just to save you the hassle. If, on the other hand, I saved you the fun...by all means throw it away. - If some new program you're trying pops up a requester saying something like "Can't find Babble font..", load up a font (pick one) in the Fed and Save it as "Babble". You can't just rename the .font file, you have to have Fed make one for you as you SaveAs the font. - If you run some program and get a "Stack Overflow" box try running NoFastMem first or jacking the Stack number way up, like to 32K, then 100K. - Of the c commands we left on the master WorkBench, probably the next ones you'll want to try will be Skip, Lab and Ask. Skip and Lab are if you want to skip a certain part of a scriptfile, and Ask gets imput from you (yes/no) before continuing on with the scriptfile. There are better Asks around on the BBS's. - Make sure to use the Capture Buffer when you're on a BBS to capture all the file descriptions so you can review them at your leisure, as well as have them for reference. Have a little space ready, though. My buffer from JC BBS is 92,217 bytes. - Definitely get into the Ed commands, like CS and CE, and especially the Find feature. You can use T first, to get to the beginning, then the Find, or BF for Backward Find. Less (Type) has a search feature "/(name)", also case-sensitive, remember. - Two technical clarifications: The system doesn't really use ALL the FastMem first then the chip Ram, it kind of balances them out. The System Monitor from the FaccII package shows this quite clearly. Also, I said upon booting up that the system first looked into the s directory for the st-seq but actually it looks in devs first for the system-configuration. - Now the answer for the great Ram icon poser: First take the icon you want for Ram and change it to a disk icon with IconLab or IconEd. Next copy it to df1, named "disk.info". Pop out df1, re-insert it and you should see your Ram icon. Pop open the DU, move the icon in between the windows and Snapshot the sucker. Open it's window, get it configured where you want the Ram window to open and Snapshot. Close the window, remove and re-insert df1 and make sure things are where they're supposed to be. Copy the icon to some private directory like MyFiles, naming it "Ramicon.info". In your st-seq, BEFORE LoadWb, put in the command Copy MyFiles/Ramicon.info Ram:disk.info That copies it to Ram and renames it "disk.info". AFTER the LoadWb command, put in the command "Delete Ram:disk.info". After LoadWb does its thing the Ram icon is "set" so the .info file can then be deleted, leaving things neat and tidy. * - Other BBS programs I like: ShoWiz - displays pics in fun ways Slideshow - ditto LMV - poor man's animation program, but fun ShowAnim - the next step after LMV Friends - cute hack Suck - ditto Target - ditto VacBench - ditto (this one's really a trip) BenchQuake - a classic, right up there with Melt RainBench - ditto Dissolve - nice pic displayer Sand - I don't know why I like this little fella so much Startle - Honorable Mention for hack of the year Trails - your pointer's broken! WaveBench - another good hack Zonx - fun little arcade game Cycles - arcade game like in the movie Tron Icefont - definitely font of the year, for paint & processor AreaCode - gives you location of area code Keylock - locks up your keyboard and mouse until you type in your secret word. I (just for fun) protect my nude pics with it FM - File allocation map, shows where the bytes are on the disk. No real practical use for us but fun to pretend IFF2PCS - Makes a puzzle out of your IFF pics..very creative Tetrix - I mentioned this before. Extremely addictive EVO - a graphics program of how the skull has evolved over the ages Earth - shows Earth orbiting on any axis, x, y and z I urge you to support the ShareWare concept, and don't forget the BBS's; they're doing a lot for us with no thought of compensation. If they ask for a little something, please give. Also, for some reason, the SyOps get real bent out of shape when people just hang up instead of exiting the BBS correctly, usually with a !, E or G, so I guess it's a software hassle and we should be courteous enough to follow proper protocol. * The next-to-last stage of the journey is "CD dh0:", or CD'ing from your hard drive. Yes, you want 30 megs if you can afford it; you'll find out quickly hard drives aren't cheap for the Amiga, just 'cause there aren't many people making them. In a sense, there's not a lot that can be said about them. They're just another device, like Ram or the disk drives. You CD from dh0 so there's no noisy disk access, which is certainly nice. Faster too, as you might imagine. There's no doubt they're great..just not as "necessary" as most hard drive owners would have you believe. Remember, we're just talking storage here, not memory. Memory is what you need for the big graphics, storage is just that, storage. * In another sense, of course, they're simply fabulous. * First thing I want to say about them is forget all that "partitioning" business you'll hear about. Just call it dh0 and be done with it. What you "loose" in speed is more than made up for by the ease, convenience and fun of just having it be one of the gang. Along those lines I'd also say to forget all that hard drive back-up business, only 'cause 90% of what you're copying over you either have on a master disk or in the archives, and the remaining 10% you can just slap onto a floppy. I was up to something like nineteen back-up disks before I realized what an idiot I was. I mean, there's nothing wrong with copying over a whole bunch of small programs, like a bunch of graphic hacks, just because it would be a pain to de-arc them all. But I'm sitting there using some Hard Drive Backup Program and copying over these mega-byte programs like Online! and Dpaint when the masters are sitting a foot away in the disk rack! So keep a backup of what you think necessary, then keep it updated. * Probably the greatest thing about the hard drive is the freedom to incorporate all those little twenty to thirty-thousand byte programs onto the Bench, where before there wasn't qui-i-i-te enough room. And it's also nice to have the option of having two, three, or even four commands of the same type at your fingertips, like gShow, Sview, ShowILBM and ShowMac renamed Show, Show2, 3 and 4, and Play, 2, 3 and 4 for BMP, Play, Play8sv4 and GPlayer. VERY nice, even. * The two main problems we face when running things from the hard drive are Ram recovery and our Assigns. There'll be other snags along the way, but those are the main babies. The Ram recovery is the same as before: Quitting as many of the sub- routines as possible and Anything Else You Can Think Of. The problem we face that the floppy owners don't is that in many instances we're trying to run programs/games that were never designed to have LoadWB, etc, run before them, using up precious byteage. For that matter, even Mount and BindDrivers might be enough to kill it. So the best you can do is go through the whole list, right down to Path Reset and removing df1's disk, and hope for the best. Not to discourage you, though..I've gotten almost everything to run from the hard drive. Some, like Flight Simulator, are kind of cute: Try copying the 154,083-byte AmigaFS file and it copies exactly 86,016 of them..just enough to run the demo! The Assign stuff is fairly straightforward. Make sure you assign the actual disk name to the hard drive's directory name. If the name's two words use the format Assign "EPYX Destroyer:" dh0:Games/Destroy or to whatever directory the game's in. For sub-directories it would be Assign "EPYX Destroyer/Data:" dh0:Games/Destroy/Data Hopefully the Assigns will go smoothly. You never can tell when some crazy program will seek out "df0:GameData" or something, seeking df0 by name and stopping everything. With any luck the game'll pop up a requester so you can find out what it's looking for so you can re-Assign it in the scriptfile. You can try file-zapping it, looking for a "df0" that you can change to "dh0", but I personally haven't had much luck that way. * Basic description of my hard drive layout (Interlace mode, of course): The DU takes up the top half of the screen, two CLI windows are across the bottom with the hard drive's window taking up the rest. In the hard drive's window are ten drawers, labeled: Audio Bench Games Graphics Icons Misc Modem Notepad Paint Test That seems to just about cover everybody. I've got all the docs in Misc, pics, animations and hacks in Graphics (11.3 megs @ 633 files), all the usual tools in Bench and 5 megs of Games. I've also (blush) got almost a meg of icons hogging up space..shame on me. Along with the icon-less directories like libs, c, etc, I also have a small smattering of misc directories like Temp, X, and MyFiles. Test is empty, it's for when I need a drawer to test a program that won't run out of Ram, etc. Hard Drive Misc: - You always/usually want to CD into the directory the programs's in; just keep in mind it's something NOT to try if it won't run. - A lot of docs, like for animations, say the default tool has to be in the same directory as the file(s), but it usually doesn't. Obviously you want to keep all the graphic tools where they belong, not spread out all over hell and gone, so try it straight up first and see. - Most programs can be run just by typing in the name but some DO have to be Run, so keep that in mind also. - You've just possibly wandered across this cute little uncopyable 297- byte file on your game disks, named, perhaps appropriately enough, " ". Yes, eight silly little spaces...eight tiny blank uncopyable little spaces standing between defeat and victory. Which will it be??? For the answer, please send $15 to the address listed below...no-no, just kidding. Actually, I don't know what the hell it is. Some kind of small, uncopyable file would be my guess. Irregardless, I've gotten all my games that had it on the disk to run. You make a copy of the game, rename it to (name)Boot, and put it in df1. You can try it in df0 but all of mine like df1. Start up the program from dh0, it'll start loading and at some point will access df1, scratch around for a second reading the uncopyable file, and then you're back to the hard drive. - Chessmaster doesn't have the 297 file, but still needs to be in df1, renamed. It makes this simply incredible access sound and then it's back to the hard drive. Only the main game program Chessmaster has to be on the boot disk, but it can't be Copied onto the disk, it has to be Maraudered, like the 297 file, all of which means that you'll have a different boot disk for each game with an uncopyable/Marauder-onlyable file on it. - If "onlyable" is in the next edition of Webster's, I want the royalties. - If you copy all the files over to the hard drive from the original master Silent Service disk, voila, Guru-City when you try and run it. Make a nice standard copy of it with MarauderII, copy those files over and it runs just smooth as silk. Just something to remember. - You can often NewZap programs that list df0 by default in their Save or Load windows and have them pop up dh0 instead. DPaintII and IconLab1.2 are two that spring to mind. Sometimes, like with DPaint, it has a separate "df0" for each window, so always make sure you Continue Search (Amiga-C) just to make sure. Also, remember you're SWITCHING them, so you can still access df0 in the future. If (cough cough) you can even imagine the need. - Sometimes a program has been written to look for a certain accompanying file to be on the surface of the disk, not in a directory. In that case you'd copy the file to dh0 in the scriptfile, load up the prog (without Run), and then delete the file from dh0 when the program's through. - Games/Progs I've run from my hard drive: DpaintII, Online!, Prowrite, Chessmaster, Dark Castle, Silent Service, Uninvited, Starglider, The Pawn, Destroyer, Defender of the Crown, Music Studio, Music Mouse, Suspended and BattleChess. Yes, I confess it's a waste of storage to put big games you don't play very often on the hard drive, but then again, hey, live it up. When I get to 29 megs, I'll worry about it. * As a tender act of mercy, I'm now going to tell you floppy owners the one way in which your machine blows the doors off your buddy's there with his snazzy hard drive. It's something you'd never think of until you actually got a hard drive, and your buddy sure as hell isn't about to mention it! I suppose I'm committing some great moral crime here, but I just thought that there may be some of you out there who know you'll never ever own a hard drive, and after reading this last section on how truly tremendous they are, and how you are really lower than dog drool if you don't have one, well, I just thought you deserved a little something to lift your crushed spirits back up. I can only hope the other hard drive owners understand. It's just, well, maybe I shouldn't tell you. I mean, it's really kind of embarrassing in a way. It's like, some major flaw in the plan, some gross oversight that should be corrected immediately by Commodore, or God. A pitiful self-reproachful fact that MUST fight it's way through bigotry and shame until it finally surfaces in the fresh light of Truth. One fact. One simple, bare little fact: Floppies are MUCH faster than hard drives..ONCE you've run it already. Because of FaccII. You see, FaccII doesn't work with hard drives, it's just for floppies. So once YOU run something, then run it again, it's coming lightening-fast out of memory, whereas with the hard drive we're always reading from the hard disk. Yes, it's faster than reading off the floppies, yes, it's deadly quiet, but yes, it's still reading off the disk instead of out of memory. So, by comparison, a hard drive can only be called that most slanderous of computer put-downs, "slow". NOW you feel much better. And at what bitter price? My pride. I've seen BBS files on how to configure the hard drive to accept FaccII, but the way I look at it is this: The people that did FaccII, a sophisti- cated program by anyone's standards, obviously knew all about hard drives and yet chose not to adapt FaccII to them, so there must be a very good reason. By the same token, if I actually got the hard drive running with FaccII, and then it crashed, I'd have to put the whole experience on my Stupidest Things I've Ever Done List, and who needs that? It actually took me a little while to get used to being, uh, "somewhat slow" (what a word to have to use!) again. Y'see (and keep it down 'cause it's kind of a secret), if you're ONLY going to be doing CLI stuff and no big graphics or audio thing, you can really crank up the buffers to like 700 or something, and then in a Select file (or scriptfile) copy c/Dir nil: copy c/CD nil: copy c/Ed nil: copy c/NewCLI nil: copy c/f nil: copy c/e nil: etc copy s/g nil: copy s/m nil: etc copy CLI-Buster nil: etc etc etc That'll lodge those suckers deep into memory for Instant Recall. Your computer will be so swift and sure and lightening-fast that you'll be bound to say, as I did, "Wow! Just like a hard drive!!". * And when you get the hard drive up and running and really want to wig-out, you can always load up Ram and "CD Ram:". It could only be called a beautiful, final step to an evolution. Excuse me, did I say "final"? I must be wrong. Some two hundred thousand bytes of commands immediately accessible out of Ram, millions of bytes of storage, a million bytes of memory if we want it, modem, printer, receiver, plexitable, bench... Sounds to me like it's only the beginning. * * * Well, that's about it. Let's all take a deep breath..ah-h-h-h-h! Yep, feels pretty good knowin' all that fancy computer stuff. Yep, feels pretty good bein' able to shuffle them icons all over the place, feels good knowin' you got the best of that ol' "manual".. Yep, bet ya even found a thing or two in that ol' "manual" that might be more than handy someday... Yep, bet ya dug through them DOS books and snagged a couple of gems that even the ol' BenchMaster doesn't know... Yep, bet that all feels pretty good... Yes, indeedy... REAL good... And I think that's fine. Because that means it must be time for Part7.